Petitions and Petitioning from the Medieval Period to the Present

这个研究网络汇集了来自八个国家和六个学科的专家，将审查从中世纪到现在的请愿书，以比较和相互联系的方式研究实践。长期以来，请愿和请愿一直是人们与当局之间最重要和最受欢迎的互动形式之一。这些机制揭示了跨政治文化和政治文化内部参与和代表的潜在过程。作为普遍和无处不在的做法，请愿有无数的形式和发挥不同的功能，但它们通常是在特定的时间和地理背景下进行研究的。在当前的背景下，电子请愿的出现是对成熟民主国家政治参与度下降的回应，这为现在研究这一主题提供了进一步紧迫的知识基础，正如数字化项目的增长将把访问请愿作为来源一样。作为一个主题，请愿跨越了时间、空间和政体的界限，这就是为什么这个网络采用比较的方法。为了确保将重点放在一组可比较的政策上，该网络考察了欧洲和北美从十三世纪到现在的请愿发展情况。这样的视角将使我们首次能够确定不同国家和时间背景下请愿书的特殊和一般之处，以及它们是如何跨越这些边界进行翻译和改编的。来自历史、法律、文学、传播学、政治学和社会学的研究人员的专业知识将使该网络能够从不同的方法角度和不同的背景下，批判性地审视请愿和上访作为实践的多种功能。该网络为早期职业学者和博士研究人员提供了特别的条件，以便在学科和专业之间建立能力和相互促进。该网络的三个研讨会将产生一个新的请愿的比较历史，由网络成员合作撰写。已确认的参与者包括最近在英国、美国、欧洲和澳大利亚领导重大项目的研究人员。因此，该网络将从各种资助机构委托的项目中获得进一步的好处。将国际研究人员和项目聚集在跨学科对话中，将进一步推动该网络发展新合作的雄心。一个关键的优先事项是促进新的项目，这些项目将在更加雄心勃勃的比较框架内审查请愿和请愿，特别是通过从全球角度审查这些做法。该项目的进一步意义在于，从更广泛的比较和历史角度来看待电子请愿的兴起，这是一种不断被改造的最新形式。为此，该网络聘请了管理当代电子请愿系统的公共政策专业人员和组织电子请愿运动的非政府组织。调查结果将通过与议会教育服务处和数字平台合作向更广泛的公众传播。三个网络事件将回答(1)什么是请愿？：我们应该如何界定请愿与其他政治、法律和社会活动的区别；（二）信访是如何发展的？：请愿传统是如何跨越时间和空间被转化、翻译和转化的；(3)上访为何重要，何时重要？：请愿如何影响社会和政治变革。一个连贯的多作者卷提供一个新的比较历史的请愿是研究网络的主要产出。除此之外，该项目将巩固和指导新一代的信访研究，从更广泛的比较角度审视不同的传统，并促进对这一复兴的政治实践的新思考。

Bringing together experts from eight countries and six disciplines, this research network will examine petitions from the medieval period to the present to study practices in comparison and in connection to each other. Petitions and petitioning have long been among the most important and popular forms of interaction between people and authority. These mechanisms reveal the processes underlying participation and representation across and within political cultures. As universal and ubiquitous practices, petitions have taken myriad forms and performed diverse functions, but they have typically been studied in specific chronological and geographic settings. Addressing the current context, in which e-petitions have emerged in response to falling political participation in mature democracies, provides a further pressing intellectual rationale for examining this theme now, as does the growth of digitisation projects that will transform access to petitions as sources. As a subject, petitions cut across boundaries defined by time, space and polity, which is why this network adopts a comparative approach. To ensure a focus on a comparable group of polities, the network examines the development of petitioning within Europe and North America from the thirteenth century to the present day. Such a perspective will allow us to identify for the first time what was exceptional and generic about petitions in different national and temporal contexts, as well as how they were translated and adapted across these boundaries. The expertise of researchers from History, Law, Literature, Communication Studies, Political Science, and Sociology will enable the network to critically examine the manifold functions of petitions and petitioning as practices across different contexts and from contrasting methodological perspectives. The network makes particular provision for early-career scholars and doctoral researchers, in order to build capacity and cross-fertilisation across academic disciplines and specialisms.The network's three workshops will result in a new comparative history of petitioning, collaboratively authored by members of the network. Confirmed participants include researchers who have recently led major projects from the UK, USA, Europe and Australia. As such, the network will unlock further benefits from projects commissioned by a variety of funding bodies. Bringing together international researchers and projects in interdisciplinary dialogue will further the network's ambition to develop new collaborations. A key priority is catalysing new projects that will examine petitions and petitioning within even more ambitious comparative frameworks, particularly through examining these practices in global perspective. The project has further significance in placing in broader comparative and historical perspective the rise of e-petitioning as the latest form of a practice that has been continually reinvented. To this end, the network engages public policy professionals who administer contemporary e-petitions systems and NGOs who organise e-petition campaigns. Findings will be disseminated to a wider public through working with Parliament's Education Service and digital platforms. The three network events will answer (1) what is a petition?: how we should define petitions as distinct from other political, legal, and social engagements; (2) how has petitioning developed?: how have petitioning traditions been transformed, translated, and transmuted across time and space; and (3) why and when do petitions matter?: how petitions have shaped social and political change. A coherent multi-authored volume providing a new comparative history of petitioning is the primary output of the research network. Beyond this, the project will consolidate and direct a new generation of petitioning studies that examine distinct traditions in a wider comparative perspective and facilitate new thinking about this resurgent political practice.